Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 7, 1991 TAG: 9104160432
SECTION: THE METRO TOURNAMENT PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk / Sportswriter
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
OK, McFillen likely didn't say that and his two adult daughters really didn't turn munchkin, but there have been times in the last 10 months when the conference boss had to wonder which Metro family member would be the next to leave.
The metro tried to become the nation's first super conference and add football as a league sport. This is a league in which 16 plus 12 equaled 4.
Only the savings and loan industry has had more losses in the last year that the conference that brings its 16th annual basketball tournament to the Roanoke Civic Center this weekend.
If this is a great tournament -- and play in the last three weeks has displayed a top-to-bottom competitiveness rare in Metro History -- it will be a major upset for a league that has had a Titanic year.
The Sun Belt Conference tried a friendly takeover of the Metro, which then managed to stay in business by inviting Sun Belt members UNC Charlotte and South Florida.
In a two-month span, the Metro lost half of its eight members for 1991-92, along with its automatic NCAA Tournament bid for next year.
The Metro tried to build a 16-team football league by locking up most of the major independents east of the Mississippi River. Within those 16, the Metro wanted a dozen basketball schools, leaving the Big East trio and Colonial Athletic Association member East Carolina as football players only.
Instead, in a two-month period starting in mid-September, Florida State moved to the Atlantic Coast Conference, South Carolina switched to the Southeast Conference, Metro invitee Miami opted for the Big East and two Metro founding members, Cincinnatti and Memphis State, helped form the Great Midwest Conference.
The Metro's grandiose plans seemed doomed from the start. For years, the Metro has struggled to get its own members thinking unity. For years, this was the only Division I basketball conference that didn't share NCAA and non-conference TV money among its members.
Just when it seemed the Metro was getting its heads together, the defections turned the league's membership gap in a chasm.
The Metro administrators could grasp the Florida State and South Carolina moves, because they were getting football alignments in established conferences. The Cincinnatti and Memphis State pullout for the Great Midwest stunned the Metro, which since has chosen to portray the duo's move like that of the NFL Colts, who backed up the moving vans and pulled away from Baltimore to Indianapolis in the middle of the night.
One Metro athletic director, when mentioning the Tigers' and Bearcats' future affiliation, refers to "the Great Midwest, spelled G-R-A-T-E."
Don't expect any goodbye kisses this weekend under the Mill Mountain Star.
There has been rancor and pettiness surrounding the Metro's share of the NCAA and Raycom television money. the animosity has been so thick in the Metro, you'd need a chainsaw to cut it. It's too late for detente.
The Metro's strongest rivalry, Louisville-Memphis State, is likely over after a potential semifinal matchup here. Louisville and Cincinnatti, Ohio River neighbors who have played annually since being Missouri Valley Conference mates in the mid-60s, have split.
Roanoke, which hasn't played host to a Division I conference tournament since the Southern left a decade ago, inherited this civil war. This season, Louisville skidded and Menphis State has roller-coastered. Virginia Tech, the tournament host, has endured its third straight losing season - a condition the Hokies haven't faced since the early '50s.
A crumbling conference, a recession and a nation watching a war didn't help either. The 16th edition of Metro mania has tremendous corporate support and a refirbished arena, but fewer than 6,000 of the 9,843 tournament ticket books were sold.
Welcome to Murphy's Law tournament.
In recent months, the Metro has had more meetings than the United Nations. The Metro enjoyed five Final Four berths in the '80s, but the '90s haven't been kind. The Metro could use a kick-start this weekend.
McFillen might have seen all this coming at the Metro meetings in Destin, Fla., in late May. The commissioner went to play tennis one afternoon and locked the keys in his rental car - with the motor running.
Doesn't is seem like the Metro's tank has been emptying ever since.?
by CNB